EliseTI fell in love with a cottage cheese pancake so good I bought a cookbook to try to replicate them. But you can buy wet or dry cottage cheese there. We will see if drying cottage cheese dripping it in the fridge will work.

Elise,

You might try Friendship Farmer Cheese (if available in your area) as a substitute. It has the consisitency of a dry cottage cheese with a slight tang. It works great in blintzes and would probably work for you in this recipe.

Wonderful trip report, dining digest, and scenic photos! Love that goat! I'm not sure if I even know where Latvia is, let alone anything about the country, the people or the food. But thanks to your fabulous reporting - I now know more than I did!

So....is the cottage cheese in the pancake recipe or are the pancakes filled with cottage cheese after they are cooked?

tcrouzerWonderful trip report, dining digest, and scenic photos! Love that goat! I'm not sure if I even know where Latvia is, let alone anything about the country, the people or the food. But thanks to your fabulous reporting - I now know more than I did! So....is the cottage cheese in the pancake recipe or are the pancakes filled with cottage cheese after they are cooked? Thanks, EliseT!

Oh Elise! Now you've made me want to go to Lithuania again, which I've already visited six times in 1987, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2003 and 2007.

I tend to avoid upscale dining establishments with the foreign cuisine when I'm in Vilnius or Kaunas. I patronize the places serving Lithuanian cuisine, kugelis, cepeliniai, potato pancakes, kibiniai, šašlykai, etc., or else modern Lithuanian diner type food currently popular with the masses such as you can find at Čili Pica and Mambo Pizza. I always sample the kibiniai and čeburėkai being sold by old women from carts in the Freedom Alley pedestrian boulevard in Kaunas and any šašlykai I find being grilled on street barbecues in the old town of Vilnius as well.